Poznan forum decisions and Forum reports - Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum

A number of decisions were taken at the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum annual event held in Poznan, Poland, on 28-30 November.

1. Permanent participant status

The important news learned just before the Poznan event was that the CSF has been granted for the next 12 months (and hopefully it will continue after that) permanent participant status at the intergovernmental thematic platform meetings of the Eastern Partnership. It will be important that the CSF makes maximum use of this, and shows that civil society has expertise to bring added value to the meetings.

2. Neighbourhood Civil Society Facility

In addition, civil society organisations in the Partner countries, other ENP countries, EU members and candidate countries are invited to submit concept notes for funding under the Neighbourhood Civil Society Facility. The Steering Committee is preparing a submission to support the work of the national platforms and to establish the Forum Secretariat. For Forum participants interested in sending applications, the call can be found here.

3. Decisions on Social Dialogue Working Group, Strategy Concept, and Legal Registration of Secretariat of CSF

It was approved that from the 2012 annual Forum event there will be an additional working group:
WG 5. Social Dialogue - to focus on social rights and social dialogue, labour market and other social and economic issues pertinent to the Eastern Partner countries.
A decision was taken to register as a legal entity the Secretariat of the Forum, the governing body of which should be the CSF Steering Committee, and accountable to the whole Forum through the Steering Committee. The statutes will be finalised by the Steering Committee at the end of January 2011 following a final call for feedback from Forum participants.
The draft Strategy Concept was approved - and will be finalised by the Steering Committee at the end of January 2011 following a final call for feedback from Forum participants.

4. Statements endorsed by Forum and working group publications

The composition of the new Steering Committee, and the different statements announced in Poznan and Forum reports published since are all available on the CSF website (archive.eap-csf.eu), as follows:

1 December 2011: EaP Civil Society Forum elects new Steering Committee

30 November 2011: EaP Civil Society Forum call EU to lead in preserving and promoting the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol

30 November 2011: Statement of the EaP Civil Society Forum on the sentencing of Ales Bialiatski in Belarus

29 November 2011: EaP Civil Society Forum appeal on Ukraine: the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine should be initialled

12 December 2011: Monitoring report on the human rights situation in the Eastern Partnership countries is published

8 December 2011: Statement on the situation with press freedom in Georgia

5 December 2011: Pilot edition of the European Integration Index for the EaP countries was presented

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